Officials have revealed that China made RMB1.16bn ($170m) operating profit from the Beijing Olympics. RMB 79.6 billion ($11.67 billion) from tourism revenue alone. Beijing has now replaced Shanghai as China's hottest tourist destination this year with its Olympic and post Olympic's appeal. Beijing registered a huge increase of 35 percent in tourists traffic during the past
National Day holiday. The Olympic venues became the most favourite places for tourists to visit instead of Forbidden City and Great Wall.
Not only has Tourism shown an increase in revenue, but also there has been a major increase in the Beijing's Job Market. It provided 430,000 jobs in major construction projects, the retail and wholesale industry also created 130,000 new jobs. Moreover, the financial, insurance, IT and telecommunications industries also earned significant revenues from the Olympic Games.
The Olympics promoted cohesion in society. China has not had national event since “cultural revolution”. The Olympics really brought the Chinese people together. People were learning basic English, no matter if they were a primary school student or a over 80-year old person, everyone was so passionate about learning English. Official statistics says, nearly five million Beijing residents (35 percent of Beijing's population) have a certain level of spoken English, and it also encouraged about 30 million foreigners to learn some Chinese. Also the learning of all kinds of exercises became popular during Olympic period. The whole country was unified and there was patriotism evoked in everyone’s heart, because they wanted to show the best side of China to the world. Not to mention that the Olympics accelerate the speed of the city and country‘s development.
According to these facts, I believe Olympics was certainly not a waste of money for China.
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wow! what a huge increase in the tourism industry because of the olympics. Now i see why China had worked so hard for the 2008 olympics. It certainly was not a waste of money, if anything else, like you said it let the forgeiners learn a bit of Chinese and gave jobs to soooo many people which is a great thing. Now i can see why the Olympics is so important to the country that is presenting it.
ReplyDeleteHey!
ReplyDeleteWow, that really puts things in perspective! Sometimes its hard to really focus on the positive side effects of things when the main point involved SO MUCH money, but as far as the 2008 Olympics goes, it seems that the repercussions were even greater then the event itself! Thanks for sharing all of this info to us! You explain everything very well and showed us why, as you said, the amount of money put into it was not a waste at all! It has had such amazing benefits for China and foreigners as well!